Faculty profile: Hendrik Wolff

Hendrik Wolff wanted to meet outside, above the West Mall Complex, where you could see the entire Vancouver skyline on a clear day. It’s not surprising that the Department of Economics newest environmental economist wanted to enjoy the sunshine.

“I am an environmental economist and a lot of environmental issues are right in your face. Namely the oil and gas industry and my research agenda can help to inform this debate” Wolff said, when asked why he wanted to move to the Simon Fraser University from the University of Washington.

However Vancouver’s scenic view also helps, “look out here” Wolff says as he points to the spectacular North Shore Mountains, “the mountains are so close.  Just comparing Seattle to Vancouver, I think it is one of the starkest differences.”

Hendrik Wolff is an exceptional economist with over 30 publications to his name and it has been less than ten years since he finished his PhD at the University of California, Berkeley. Hendrik's main research is in environmental economics, working at the intersection of transportation, air pollution, energy and health. His research has led to important policy changes by the United Nations and the World Bank on the measurement of the Human Development Index and the Ease of Doing Business Index.

Wolff explains what environmental economics means by saying, “one goal of environmental economics is to put price tag on environmental goods – such as the value of this tree, clean air or traffic noise. This provides economists and politicians with cost benefit analysis and broadens the concepts of economics to any kind of good, not only the good that you can buy in the supermarket.”

As an empirical economist, Wolff uses large data sets to understand the value of environmental amenities after identifying an exogenous change. “the trick is to disentangle one environmental amenity from the other amenities.” He adds, “It’s tricky but also exciting in the research frontier.“

Wolff has performed this trick many times. His research paper “Daylight time and energy: Evidence from an Australian experiment”, which won the 2009 Ralph C. d’Arge and Allen V. Kneese Award for Outstanding Publication in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Wolff and his team concluded that daylight savings time does not conserve more energy.

“I consulted for two years for the Department of Energy in Washington DC whether the US should keep daylight saving time.” Wolff said. “Historically it [day light savings time] has saved energy, right, because you aligned more of your schedule with daylight so you don’t need artificial light and illumination so much indoors. But now if you go down to our office, you notice that the light will be on. Because the structure has changed and air conditioning has changed, actually it [energy conversation] can go in the opposite effect.”

With technology, industrial countries tend to use more energy to offset the inconveniences of our physical environment such as turning on the AC in hot weather. However Wolff still believes that daylight savings time should be implemented for health benefits.

 In a controversial paper, “Does Daylight Saving Time burn Fat? Time allocation with continuous studies”, Wolff and his fellow researcher, Momoe Makino, recommend that the Department of Health, rather than the Department of Energy should be in charge of daylight saving time.

“I collected the US time use surveys, more than 50,000 people are asked every year what they did in the past 24 hours and in 15 minute intervals” Wolff explained that he looked at the same day in a year with daylight savings time and the other year with no daylight saving. “Comparing day by day between those two years we can see that people significantly engage in more outdoor recreational activities.” If the benefit of daylight saving time has shifted from energy conservation to encouraging more exercise, the decision to hold daylight saving time should be made from a holistic perspective.

Wolff’s promising study on the Ecuador’s Payment of Environmental Services will have big impact for policy makers. Wolff and his colleagues from Seattle University were supported by a National Science Foundation (USA) $450,000 grant for a multi-year study that took them to Ecuador to study this new policy. He explains “this policy tool that Ecuador was implementing was to pay farmers, 50 to 80 dollars a hectare if they promise not to deforest one hectare of their parcel and we want to analyze if it worked.”

Wolff hopes that his research will have lasting effects and will help the Ecuadorian government take advantage of the new Green Climate Fund that could have huge impacts for developing countries. Wolff said “this green fund starting in 2020 and 100 billion dollars a year will be paid by the industrial world to developing countries.” Wolff was quite proud that his hometown, Bonn, in western Germany, would be in charge of this huge fund on behalf of the United Nations.

According to Wolff, there is still more to do. He said “Right now, for funding reasons, we only have a cross section. We don’t know how these farmers will behave after they obtain this money for a couple of years. So right now we are applying for new grant or an extension of the grant in 2017 or 2018.”

When you think of an environmental economist, you would imagine that they would appreciate the outdoors. Not surprisingly, Wolff loves outdoors sports. When asked if he would be joining the Department of Economics Intermural soccer team, he responded, “Absolutely, I love to. I play a lot of soccer and unfortunately right now I have two broken bones because of soccer. As soon as they heal, I’ll be in line.”